


Wild Child

by esama



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 18:51:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1358167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry nearly dies in the fangs of the basilisk and in desperate act to save him Fawkes tears him away from the world he knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wild Child

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Fanfiction.net on 30/22/2011

**Wild child**

 

Fawkes cried at the sight of Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, lying in the teeth of the dead, broken basilisk. He had come to the boy in his hour of desperation to be his helper, his guide and his saviour if need be - but the boy had rushed forward too quick, too desperate and too reckless. Now he just hung there, bleeding and already more gone than there, dark veins of poison running beneath his pale skin, his eyes hazy with his upcoming death.

He had done what he had meant to, the Phoenix knew. The cursed diary was on his chest, pierced by one of the fangs that had pierced the boy, leaking ink like blood into the boy's already mortal wounds. The ghost was gone, ruined by poison and blood and a will too strong to live in such a young body. The girl on the floor was recovering, slowly coming back to consciousness - while her saviour died a painful death.

This wasn't what had been meant to happen. Fawkes didn't know what had been fated, but this was wrong - and he didn't know what to do. His tears could heal even a basilisk's poison, he knew, and he was certainly horrified enough to cry enough of them to heal Harry Potter's every would, but the boy was still pierced on the teeth, his breath rasping in shredded lungs, his blood flowing down from his back, where the fang that entered his chest reappeared. No matter how many tears Fawkes cried, it wouldn't make any difference - not when the fangs were still in the boy, pumping their venom inside him.

He could remove the boy, Fawkes knew that, he had the strength - but the moment he did, what was keeping the boy's blood inside him would give in. The fangs, the horrible venomous fangs, were keeping him from bleeding out while the poison, so determined to reach every part of him, kept his heart beating. Remove him and death would be instantaneous.

Desperation more than certainty of knowledge sent the phoenix to the boy, to clutching onto his shoulders, dragging him off, all the while enveloping himself, and the boy - and eventually the dead basilisk too, connected as it was to the boy - in flames. It was the only way - the only way to remove the boy without crushing him. In the flames, Fawkes would be able to cry his healing tears and --

But no, it didn't work like that. There was too much blood loss, too much venom - the basilisk was there too, still and lifeless and hanging onto the boy's corpse, ripping him into pieces. Fawkes cried and in desperation dragged all three of them into the Dimension of Flames, desperately try to free the boy, to heal him and save him and keep him alive - to cry his healing tears and will the basilisk to release its lethal grasp on the boy's body. But there was so much venom, insane amounts of it, it needed to go, it needed to vanish - it needed to be replaced.

Fawkes cried into the eternal fires of the Dimension of Flames, and in a last act of desperation he broke the basilisk finally free of the boy - and then, in order to get to the venom, he broke himself and the boy apart.

 

* * *

 

When Harry woke up, he was lying on cold ground with his body burning. At first he thought it was fever - or venom, _basilisk's venom_ \- but as he wrenched his eyes open he saw it was more than that. His fingers, covered in odd pale veins, were actually burning, with a faint flame flickering over his skin. More confused than frightened, Harry stared at the flame for a long while, before noticing that it ran down his arm and onto his shoulder - and as he tried to pull himself up, he noticed that his other arm was burning too, as were his legs.

Before he could muster the strength to panic, however, the fires began sizzling out, first on his fingers and then on the back of his hand, up his arm and shoulder, until he was left there with a naked, slightly smoking body and skin covered in pale, almost silver veins that ran all over his skin like a black net. He still felt hot, feverish even, but as all the flames went out, he found to his surprise that he didn't actually feel _bad._ Actually, he felt the complete opposite of bad - he felt _incredible_.

Only he couldn't understand why. Just moments ago he had been dying. He was sure he’d been dying - the basilisk had bit him, no, chewed right through him before he had managed to get Gryffindor's Sword through the top of its mouth. The basilisk had died, as had the diary which Harry had been holding against his chest, but it had bitten _right through him…._

Shivering at the memory, Harry hastily touched his chest, feeling the places where he had been bitten. Just next to his heart and on his shoulder… except the holes he had been expecting to see weren't there. Gasping with surprise, he glace down to see great round patches of pure white where the great serpent had bit him - the sources, it seemed, of the white veins all over him. But, aside from the odd discoloured patches and the veins, he wasn't actually _hurt_. There was no hole, no scar, nothing, aside from the discolouring his skin was completely smooth, unblemished. And he could breathe easy, his lung was fine too. And as he reached back to touch the exit wounds, he couldn't feel anything either - not even the white patches, if there were any.

He was fine. Harry blinked with shock and then laughed with disbelief, patting his chest. He was _fine_. A bit weird looking, but alive, healthy, whole! And feeling incredible too. Shivering more with excitement than anything else, Harry stumbled up to his feet and stared down at himself. He looked really Merlin damned weird with all the white blood veins going all across his skin, down to his toes even, but he was _alive_ so he didn't really care.

"Ginny, did you --" he stared, turning to look around him, expecting to see her somewhere nearby. He stopped - froze in place - as he found out that not only was she nowhere nearby, but that he was not where he expected to be. The chamber, the stone floor, the water, the pipes - the great corpse of the basilisk - none of it was anywhere to be seen. Instead there was a forest and --

"Oh my god," Harry whispered, as his eyes landed on a small, fragile creature, lying in a pile of red and orange feathers. Kneeling down, he pushed aside couple of long tail feathers, while the naked baby chick that was Fawkes peeped at him weakly. "Oh Merlin, Fawkes, what happened to you? Where are we?" the little bird chirped again, unable to offer any answers or reassurances. While Harry watched helplessly, the little chick wobbled its head weakly from side to side, trying to get up, trying to look around.

"Here, let me--" Harry murmured, and gently picked the bird up to his palms, scooping up some of the ash and feathers to keep the bird warm in the cold, gloomy forest. Together they looked around themselves helplessly, and while Harry took in the great trees, he was fairly certain that neither of them had any idea where they were. "It's not the DarkForest, is it?" he asked quietly, and Fawkes peeped mournfully in answer.

For a long while neither of them made a sound, just watching the old, foreign forest around them. With the odd fire in veins keeping him warm, Harry didn't really truly notice the fact that he was naked until a droplet of water hit his bare shoulder - and rain started to slowly dribble down from above. Cursing softly, Harry glanced around until he noticed a crook in one of the tree's roots - and an odd hole, almost like a cave, just below it. It was small, but it looked like it had enough a roof to serve as a shelter.

Quickly the wizard scooped up all the feathers and most of the ash Fawkes' had dropped, before jumping to his feet and running to the small cave. He barely noticed how easy it was, to run and jump over the roots - how little it hurt to step on a sharp twig or a rock on his way - too concerned over tiny Fawkes and not keen on getting wet. Soon, though, they were in the cave, which Harry found to be even smaller than it looked, but twice as comfortable. It was filled with old leaves that rustled dryly as he sat down on them, now safely out of the rain's reach.

"That's a little better, isn't it?" he murmured, taking some of the leaves and making a pile of them, before arranging Fawkes' old feathers onto it like a nest, and then gently placing the baby phoenix down. Fawkes peeped softly with gratitude and settled down while the wizard peered into the rain, wondering what to do next.

"Clothing," he murmured, as the rain began in earnest to wash down across the forest. He needed clothing. What had happened to his previous ones, anyway? He’d had robes, shirt, pants, shoes and everything, and now he was naked like the day he’d been born. Frowning, he ran a hand over his face, shocked to find that his glasses were gone - as were his eyelashes, his eyebrows, and - "Oh, come on!" he murmured, running his hands over his naked scalp. Not a single hair remained, only naked skin.

What had happened? He had been burning when he woke up, so… his clothes had burned? And it hadn't hurt that much, which was good, but also worrisome. And Fawkes was a chick now, had he….

Frowning, Harry dropped his hands down and touched his chest. The wounds were gone, as if they had never been there - replaced by silvery blotches. "Phoenix tears, of course," he murmured, remembering what Dumbledore had said and turning to the baby phoenix. "Phoenix tears have healing powers! You healed me, Fawkes, didn't you?" he beamed down to the chick, as it peeped softly up at him. "Thank you! But… is that why you're a chick again - is that why you burned? Wait, burned…."

Fawkes had had a burning date - a premature one at that, judging by how young and magnificent the bird had been. And didn't phoenix's travel over great distances by teleporting with fire, like wizards did with apparition? They weren't in the Chamber of Secrets anymore, so they had obviously teleported. Fawkes had teleported them away, while healing him. "Wow, Fawkes. You're brilliant. It's just that… where are we, exactly?"

The chick looked up to him helplessly, and only chirped morosely in answer.

"You don't know?" Harry asked softly, his stomach sinking, and as the little bird hung his head, he swallowed and looked around. Well… if those things hanging from the trees were _lianas_ then it was pretty safe bet to say that they maybe weren't in Britain anymore. But they had to be on earth somewhere - in some exotic rain forest or something. If that was it, then they should've been able to find their way back somehow.

If not immediately, then once Fawkes was grown, they would be able to teleport back, right? How long did it take for a phoenix to grow? Some weeks? Months?

The young wizard stared into the rain just beyond their simple shelter and frowned. If it was months then he was maybe in trouble. Or most certainly in trouble. Definitely in trouble. How did one survive in a rain forest anyway? Were there some fruits around that he could eat? And, oh Merlin, what did Fawkes eat? And how would he get the food, he didn't even have a wand --

"Oh, crap," Harry murmured. He didn't have a wand. No clothing, no wand, no idea where he was, no idea when or how or _if_ he could get back. This was a level of trouble he wasn't quite adjusted to. "Well," he murmured, turning to Fawkes who looked like he was dosing off. "We're alive, we're… semi healthy. We'll figure something out, right?" he asked, and peeping feebly in answer, Fawkes fell asleep.

 

* * *

 

 

The rain lasted for hours - and throughout those hours Harry was certain that he would've been frozen and well onto his way to having a cold, if his blood hadn't still been burning. While the rain went on and Fawkes slept in his simple feather-leaf bed, the wizard examined the white veins all along his skin, soon becoming certain that the heat was really emanating from them. There was white, silvery stuff inside him and it was really warm.

It was a clear testimony to all the things he had seen in the Wizarding world that the concept didn't scare him as much as it probably should've. It was something Fawkes had done, and the phoenix hadn't seemed worried, so it was okay - and definitely better than having basilisk venom inside him. And after losing all the bones in his arm, silver veins were nothing, really. Besides, unicorns had silver blood too. Maybe his blood was now like theirs.

He worried about it for couple of hours, before finding the sharpest stick among the leaves that he could find, and using it to poke his finger. It took few tries before he managed to make an actual wound into the soft pad of his forefinger, but once he managed, he found to his relief that he was wrong. His blood was the normal red - maybe a little lighter shade of red than usually, but that might've been his imagination. The relief was followed by a shock, however, as the wound closed up right before his eyes, leaving a single bead of red blood on a perfectly healthy finger, like a red jewel.

"Fawkes' tears are still running in my system, I guess," he murmured, rubbing the blood with his thumb until it was smeared all over his fingers. He couldn't help but shudder at the thought of what if his blood had been silver - or white or something like that. Would it have been like unicorn blood? The thought of wraiths like Voldemort trying to drink his blood was not appealing in the slightest, so he supposed he ought to be grateful for having normal blood.

He determinately pushed that thought away, and instead stared into the rain, wondering what had happened back at Hogwarts. The basilisk was dead, he was sure of that. What about Ginny? The diary had been pierced, so, Tom Riddle was maybe dead, hopefully anyway. So, maybe she had recovered? And Ron had been there somewhere… hopefully they would figure out a way out - or someone would find them if they didn't…. They would tell Dumbledore what had happened - and maybe, just maybe, the old Headmaster would figure out a way to summon him and Fawkes back home.

But how long would that take?

He shook his head, wrapping his arms around his bare knees. He didn't have the time sit around moping. He needed to… to find clothing, somehow, at first. And then, once he had something to wear, he would take Fawkes and they would go out and see if they could find some people. Yeah. Maybe they were in a magical area and could find some help, that would be good, right?

But where would he find clothes? Frowning Harry peered into the forest, now with new intent. He looked left and right and up and down, trying to see if there were any signs of people anywhere. There wasn't. No marks on the trees, no paths across the foliage, nothing. Apparently this wasn't a part of the forest that people walked in often. Thinking about it and trying to figure out an easy way to find something, anything, Harry concluded after a moment that he needed to take a look from higher ground. He needed to, somehow, see above the forest. That way he would be able to tell if there were any roads nearby, any buildings….

In short, he needed to climb a tree.

Okay, that would be easy enough. The trees were oddly twisting and crooked so there wouldn't be any lack of foot holds. And the trees nearby looked like they were pretty tall - maybe even taller than the trees in the DarkForest. He probably could see the entire forest from the top branches of any one of them.

Nodding, he decided to do just that - once the rain stopped.

By the time it did, though, it was even darker than before, and Harry couldn't tell if it was because the cloud coverage was thicker or because the sun had gone down. Fawkes was awake by then and chirping pathetically, opening and closing his mouth in clear display of hunger.

"Sorry, buddy, I have nothing for either of us to eat," Harry sighed, while crawling out of their simple shelter. It was darker but he found to his relief that it wasn't quite pitch black - and it seemed like the moon or something was out, because the upper branches above them seemed to be lighter than the lower ones. "Tell you what, I'll check if I can see where we are, and in the meantime take a look at those trees, see if there's anything in them we can eat," he suggested, kneeling beside Fawkes and carefully tucking him away into the tightest, smallest corner of the simple shelter in hope that the little chick would be safe there. "You stay here and stay really quiet. There might be beasts in here; we don't want you to be caught, okay?"

The little phoenix cooed quietly and then settled down. Smiling, Harry used some of the leaves to hide the little bird even better, before looking around again for a good tree to climb. Eventually he decided to go with the one they had been sleeping under - it had a trunk full of bumps and twists, perfect for climbing - and with that decision made, he started making his way up.

Climbing was easy, he found. Incredibly easy - ridiculously easy even. He barely had to put any effort into it and he just _flew_ over the trunk, not entirely sure if he was using his feet or hands. He felt so _light_ \- or maybe _strong_ it was hard to tell which, but it was really unbelievable. Before he knew, the trunk was getting thinner and thinner and he was climbing by using the branches more than the trunk, until finally he was at the top, where the branches grew too thin and weak to climb and where he could see an incredible distance.

...And where he saw within few seconds, that they a little more than lost. It wasn't only that there were no visible streets or buildings, just forest as far as the eye could see in either direction. It was the stars - and more than that, it was the moon. It was huge, white - and all the craters were completely wrong.

Harry stared up at the sky wordlessly for a moment, carefully forcing himself not to panic because he was on a precarious perch - literally - and falling from this height would break a lot of bones. Instead he kept as still as possible, freezing his body while his mind raced.

The moon, the _moon_ was _wrong._ How could it be wrong? Nothing could change the moon - there was no magic that big, that expansive, that powerful, that it could actually affect a stellar object. And it wasn't just the moon, either. The stars were wrong too - and he was pretty decent at Astronomy, so he could tell. None of the star systems they had studied, none of the patterns, none of the familiar stars were there. And there was no milky way either, which should've been just above them. Instead there were a whole bunch of strange stars, some of them bright and some weak and all of them wrong. Just like the moon.

He shuddered slightly on the branch, not out of cold, because it seemed he was incapable of being cold, but from the sheer unnerving impossibility of it. Stars and the moon _couldn't be_ changed. So, they hadn't been. And instead he was seeing some _other_ moon, some _other_ stars - and below him, was _another_ world.

Taking a hold of the tree's trunk, Harry swallowed. Okay, transportation to another world. He had seen stranger things, hadn't he? Man with two faces, that was strange. Dragon in a hut. A sport played on broom sticks. Ghost in a diary. Basilisk, giant spiders that _talked_ , unicorns, for Merlin's sake. Wizards, goblins running a bank, _centaurs_!

Okay, none of it really beat a whole _other world_ , but he had only been in the wizarding world less than two years - there probably was a whole lot of other weird stuff there. So, there was no reason to panic. He was just in another world; he wasn't dead, or at immediate risk. Fawkes had just, somehow, transported them to another world. And once he was big and strong again, he could transport them back. Nothing to worry about.

All he needed to do was to keep them alive and fed and healthy until that time. Nothing big, just survival in a whole different world. It couldn't be that hard, right? Well, it _could_ , but not impossible. They'd manage. People managed all the time in the wilderness - and he was a _wizard_ too, he had some tricks up his sleeve. Given, he didn't have sleeves. Or a wand. And he didn't know any wizardry that could be done without one. But it still wasn't the end of the world. Right?

"We're in so much trouble," he whispered, swallowing again. With a last look at the moon, he shuddered, and dropped down to a lower branch, and began making his way down - this time taking his time to look around and see if he could find anything to eat. It didn't look like the tree had any fruit - but he did find clusters of hard nuts, rather like acorns but bigger and not at all acorn-like, which he gathered to his hands, wishing he had a bag or a shirt or anything to put them in. Just by holding them in his hands, he didn't get that many.

But maybe it didn't matter - maybe the nuts weren't edible anyway. Shaking his head, he filled one palm with the nuts and continued making his way down, now using only one hand. When he dropped down to the ground, he took a moment to glance around himself, relieved to see no movement around the area. Maybe there were no predators - that would've been nice.

"Hey there," he greeted Fawkes, after uncovering the chick from beneath the protective leaves. "I found some nuts, but I'm not sure if they're good to eat. I don't suppose you would know?"

The chick chirped and awkwardly wobbled around in his little nest to look at the nuts. He tilted his head this way and that before peeping and bobbing his head awkwardly in approval. Harry sighed with relief - now they had at least something to eat, even if wasn't much.

"Okay, let's see if I can crack these somehow," he murmured, tapping the nuts hard shell and then looking around for a rock to smash it with.

The nuts proved easy to crack - and fairly tasteless to eat. Fawkes seemed to enjoy them, eating the crumbs from Harry's fingers eagerly and cooing in approval. After the phoenix had had his fill and started to look like he was about to fall into a content slumber, Harry covered him gently again and climbed back up the tree to get some more of the nuts. A handful wasn't enough for him, after all, and he had been hungry already when he and Ron had headed down to the chamber….

After getting the nuts - and eating some which had been partially open on the tree - he headed back down. He ate most of the nuts, but crushed a couple, setting the crumbs aside for Fawkes if he woke up hungry. After that he curled up in the small shelter, throwing some of the leaves over himself and intending to try and get some sleep. There was little he could do, when the forest was so dark, after all.

As sleeping places went, it was fairly comfortable - certainly better than the cupboard had been, before he had been given an actual mattress - but the noises of the forest and the sheer foreignness of the place kept him awake for a long, long while.

 

* * *

 

When he woke up, it was to find Fawkes chirping as the little bird waddled awkwardly around. "Hey there. Feeling better?" Harry asked, and got a happy chirp and excited flap of still developing wings in answer. Harry snorted with amusement and carefully sat up, stretching his neck a little to ease the stiffness there, and then glancing around.

It was light now, and the forest looked completely different. The gloomy atmosphere of the previous night was gone, and the undergrowth looked almost _merry_ , as it gleamed in the few beams of light that made it past the thick leaf coverage above them. It still didn't look all that _habitable,_ but at least it didn't look so intimidating now.

"Okay. Let's get some more nuts and see what we do after that, shall we?" Harry murmured, and after stretching and noticing that the white veins looked a little lighter in the sunlight, he made his way to the tree trunk. With Fawkes chirping after him, he quickly made his way up, getting more nimble as he got used to the climbing. Being naked, as embarrassing as it was, was oddly helpful - there were no robes to get tangled on broken branches or anything like that, no shoes to make his footing unsteady. He was weirdly getting used to his nakedness anyway - it was oddly… not important now. It wasn't like he was cold, after all. Clothing probably would've only made him feel too hot.

"Maybe I hit my head or something," he murmured thoughtfully, as he reached the branches that had most of the nuts on them. He made a mental note of it, and then kept going until he reached the top and could see the forest. His previous night's assessment had been pretty spot on - the forest stretched as far as the eye could see and, by the looks of it, it didn't change much. There were no breaks, no empty areas, nothing, just endless greenery of the foliage and nothing else. No streets, no buildings. Nothing.

With a sigh, Harry headed back down to collect the nuts, after which he descended the rest of the way and to the ground, where Fawkes was waiting.

"So. It looks like we're on another world. No clothing, no proper shelter, no wand..." he mused, while cracking the nuts and crushing some for the phoenix, who had already eaten the previous crumbs. "We're in a bit of trouble, aren't we? It wouldn't be so bad if I had my wand, but… but I don't, obviously. I wonder what happened to it…" he trained away, frowning. Had it burned too? Or maybe been left behind when the basilisk had gotten him. "Oh bother. I really liked that wand," he murmured to himself - and then glanced down as he heard a muffled chirp.

Looking absolutely ridiculous, the little phoenix chick dragged one of his feathers towards Harry, holding it - or trying to anyway - in his beak. Harry blinked at him with surprise and then took the feather from him, looking at it. It wasn't the longest one - those were the tail feathers, which were mostly longer than Harry's arm was. This, by the looks of it, was one of the feathers of his wing - long, wide, but much smaller than the tail feathers.

Fawkes chirped eagerly at him, awkwardly nudging at his knee and looking up at him with anticipation, like waiting him to get it. And, with a slow surprise, Harry did. Phoenix feather. Those were used in _wands_ \- they conducted magic!

"Oh, blimey, Fawkes, you're brilliant! Do you think I could do it?" Harry asked, leaning down and holding the feather so that the phoenix could see it. "Make a wand out of this? How are wands made anyhow?" he thought about it, while running a finger down the feather. It was really smooth - a little ash-stained, but that was given. "They wood with a special core, so…. so maybe if I carve a wood stick hollow, I might put a feather inside it, and turn it into a wand?"

The little phoenix bobbed his head in agreement, while Harry straightened his back. Carve a stick hollow. Now how was he going to do that? He had no tools, no knife, nothing. He thought about it for a moment before shaking his head. He'd find a way. Maybe he could use a sharp piece of rock, if he could find one. There was no shortage of wood anyway; he'd be easily able to do test versions. It was no use despairing about it in any case - all he could really do was try.

"Alright," he said, nodding. "First things first, I need something to carve wood with. A piece of rock - maybe a sharp, hard piece of wood might to the trick too," he glanced down at the small phoenix and smiled. "Let's see if we can find one, shall we?"

Fawkes chirped in agreement and scooping him up in his hand, Harry stood up and started exploring the area, kicking the ground with his toes in search for something he could use. As he did, he noticed, more so than he had the previous night, how little walking hurt. Usually when he went barefoot, small rocks and sticks and even leaves could be painful, poking and stabbing the soles of his feet. Not anymore, it seemed - even when he stepped on a stick that _should've_ hurt, maybe even given him a cut, he barely felt it.

"Whatever you did to me is awesome, Fawkes," he said to the little bird. "I'm not cold at all even though I'm literally running around naked, and my feet feel amazing. And the climbing too! So easy. I felt like a monkey!" he grinned, and the blinked as he heard something. "Is that water?" he murmured and while Fawkes cooed curiously, he made his way towards it.

It was water - a small river to be exact. It was surrounded by bushes full of berries - but what Harry was most curious about was the bottom of the river. The water was clean and he could see, plain as day, the rocks covering the bottom. "Our lucky day, it seems," he grinned at Fawkes, and left the little bird on the bank to inspect the berry bushes while he himself waded into the water and started checking the rock.

He did find some sharp ones, but the jack pot came only when something actually cut the bottom of his foot. Hissing a curse, Harry jumped on one foot and lifted the other to check the sole - just in time to see the wound rapidly closing, and the water washing away the few droplets of blood that had managed to come out. "That's so handy," he murmured before peering down into the water and at whatever it had been that had cut him. Frowning, he crouched down and felt around the bottom of the river with his fingers, until they encountered something hard, and sharp.

It was a knife - a strange, black knife with a thin handle and a ring at as the handle's hilt. There had been, by the looks of it, some sort of fabric around the handle, but the currents had worn most of it away, and the rest broke when Harry touched it. But it was still a _knife_ , albeit a slightly rusty one, but with a _sharp edge._

"Look at this, Fawkes!" Harry held the knife up. "Now I have something I can carve wood with! Wicked, isn't it?"

The bird chirped around a berry he had just plucked from the bush and threw his head back to swallow it. Grinning, Harry waded out of the river, holding onto the black knife tightly, not wanting to lose it now that he had it. "I guess the berries are edible?" Harry asked, crouching down beside the little phoenix. He reached for one of them and threw it into his mouth, grinning. Now they had nuts they could eat, and berries they could eat. Maybe, if they were lucky, the river would even have some fish.

"Lady Luck likes us," he decided, after they had eaten their fill. "Come on. Let's see if we can find a fallen branch I could try carving. The sooner I manage to make a wand, the better," he said, picking the contently cooing Fawkes up so that they could make their way back to the little shelter.

 Making a wand, it turned out, wasn't as easy as that. For one, the knife Harry had found was obviously not meant for carving - what it was made for, he had no idea, but it did not perform all that admirably against wood. It took him a whole day trying to figure out how to carve wood with it - and even then the end result was fairly awkward.

And, when he put one of Fawkes' feathers inside it, it didn't work. No spell came out, no spark of magic, nothing. It remained nothing but an awkward stick, with a feather awkwardly poking from inside it.

"Okay, there's some other trick to this than just that," Harry murmured while eyeing his awkwardly carved wand. "Something else than just the wood and feather." Of course, he hadn't really thought it would be that easy. If it was, people wouldn't need to buy their wands from a shop - they would've just made their own. There were also different woods and sizes and such and the whole _wand chooses the wizard_ thing, and all.

"I guess I just will have to keep on trying," Harry murmured, setting down the failed wand and lying down next to the already slightly dozing Fawkes. "I've got the time in any case, so it'll give me something to do at least," he added, before reaching for the black knife. Hanging it from his finger by the odd circle in the hilt, he considered it thoughtfully. A knife in a river. It had been lucky that he had found it, but pretty strange. It wasn't like there were usually knives in rivers, right?

"At least now I know there might be people here," he murmured, whirling the odd knife around his finger. Someone had to have made the knife, after all. Hopefully that someone wouldn't be too mad to have him in their world. Though, it brought another problem. Harry was still completely naked.

The wizard sighed, dropping the knife beside him and resting his hands behind his neck. He had been trying to figure something out, but he hadn't been in that big of a hurry - he still had fire inside him, keeping him so warm that idea of clothing was actually a little bit uncomfortable. Besides, there was nothing around he could use - and even if he had had a wand, he wouldn't have been able to do much. He didn't know that many good charms and all the transfiguration charms used house hold objects to make house objects. When he thought about it, Hogwarts hadn't been too good at teaching survival.

But for propriety's sake, he needed something. Closing his eyes he thought about all the things he had seen around. Grass, moss, some lianas and such, lots and lots of trees - but all of them with leaves too little to be useful. There were some thick reeds growing by the river bank, but he wasn't sure if they were any good. Unless he wanted to make a skirt.

Well, at this point a skirt would better than nothing probably - and probably overall better than running around butt naked, as it was.

"Alright," he murmured, yawning. "Tomorrow, I will make a reed… skirt. Right. After that, figuring out the wand."

 

* * *

 

The reed skirt ended up being a mix of reed and grass and nimble branches from a bush next to the river - and Harry found to his surprise that, despite all his previous suspicions about stuff like that, weaving was actually pretty easy. He broke plenty of the reed leaves and sure, the result wasn't exactly high fashion, but it was very obviously as skirt. Made of leaves with branches and grass for a belt, and such.

"Well, at least I'm not running around naked anymore. Mostly not, anyway," he mused, giving his upper body a look. He couldn't tell if it was the veins getting less white, or if his own skin was getting _paler_ , but it was hard to see the difference between the white veins and his skin in the sunlight. Well, either way it was good - despite the fact that he didn't exactly mind, he still preferred the way he had looked before.

Now if only his hair would decide to grow back magically fast like it had back when Aunt Petunia had shaved him accidentally bald.

 Shaking his head, he turned to look at the reeds banking the river side. There was still aplenty of them, and after the success with the skirt… thingy, maybe he could make use of them. Actually weave something this time. A pouch of some sort could be handy - for carrying the precious phoenix feathers, and when he collected the berries and the nuts.

 "Which do you think it's more important, trying to figure out how to make a wand, or gathering food efficiently?" he asked from Fawkes, who was happily chomping his way through the lower branches of the berry bushes. The phoenix gave him a chirrup over its bony, downy shoulder and went back to the berries. Harry gave him an amused look, before taking the black knife and stepping back into the water and wading his way to the reeds.

That was when he found the second knife - in more or less the same way as he had found the first one. As he picked up the black blade, slightly rusty and the handle equally worn as the first one, he had to wonder. One knife in a river was weird enough, but two? He could defend himself now, if something happened, but… why were there knives in the river? Were there more of them?

"I need to start watching where I step," he murmured, and went to work, cutting the reeds and carrying a bunch of them to the shoreline. Setting the knives aside to be pondered upon later, he sat down with the reeds and started to try and figure out how to make something in which he could carry something.

It turned out that when the woven thing had to be secure enough to keep something in it, it was slightly harder to do right. While Fawkes ate his fill and fell into a sated slumber on Harry's knee, the wizard kept at the weaving, trying different things and destroying a lot of reeds, until he managed to make a loose satchel that might be able to hold something in it. Not anything small - the berries for one would've all fallen through the cracks - but maybe the nuts. And if he tied the precious feathers together with a piece of grass, or something like that, they might stay in the satchel too.

"That's something, I guess," he murmured once he was done. He would need to keep an eye on the satchel to make sure it wouldn't leak, but it was a start. "Now, back to trying the wand…."

He didn't have much luck with it that day, but once he had left Fawkes in the security of their small shelter and climbed the tree to bring down more nuts than they could eat at one go, the day still felt like a small success. "Tomorrow I will see if there's any fish in the river," he mused, while crushing the nuts for the small phoenix, who accepted the crumbs eagerly. "Some fish would be a welcome change, what do you think?"

Fawkes gave him a disgusted look, and laughing Harry handed him the nut crumbs. "I guess you don't care for meat. Vegetarian, huh. I guess it makes sense, for phoenixes," he murmured, watching how the little bird went about devouring his share of the meal. Actually, not that little. When they had arrived Fawkes had barely been big enough for one hand, now he was enough to fill two. He was growing faster than Harry had thought he would. "Do you always grow this fast? Is it some sort of phoenix thing?" the bird didn't answer, but then, Harry really didn't expect him to.

If magical birds grew faster than the ordinary ones, though, that was only good for them. Maybe that meant they could get home sooner.

 

* * *

 

A week later, nothing had really happened. Though Harry had found that there were fish in the river, he could only find them up stream where the river forked into the small one he knew from a much bigger one - and since the trip there took a couple of hours, he wasn't sure if it was worth it, especially since the fish were small, spiny and kind of smelly.

Fawkes turned up his nose at the fish entirely, sticking to nuts and berries with some flower buds here and there thrown in, though most of his diet was made of the nuts, as they were the biggest and easiest to get to, not to mention that they grew everywhere in the forest. On the power of the nuts, he grew, doubling his size every two days it seemed, until he was almost the size he had been before burning. His feather coat remained soft and downy with only some longer, harder feathers at the crown of his head, though, so he was still a ways from being an adult phoenix.

Harry himself, while figuring out how to weave more efficiently, had no luck with the wand. He tried every wood type he encountered, he tried to cut them more efficiently, not make as much damage, but the result was the same - even when he found more knives and other, stranger blades, in the forest, none of them did any better. The sticks remained dead and cold in his hand, and he felt none of the warm, sparkling feeling he had felt when he had held his wand for the first time - or any other wand, for that matter. For reasons he didn't quite understand, he couldn't make magic run through the wands he tried to make.

"I bet there's some sort of trade secret in making these," Harry sighed after the fourteenth failure. "Something a normal person would have no hope of figuring out." Fawkes, sadly enough, had no answer to give and could only croon and nudge at his shoulder and make him try again.

There was something very good about the week, though. After it, Harry was sure his hair would grow back. He was already starting to have awkward stubble on his scalp, and it was growing back more every day. Hopefully soon he would have enough hair on his head so that he wouldn't look like, well, a bald kid in a reed-loincloth. Which he had been for several days, now.

He couldn't wait to get back home, but he had to admit, it could've been worse. He and Fawkes had a good source of water, plenty of food and though the area they were living in wasn't exactly _comfortable_ , not as far as he knew comfort, it was still liveable. It was probably mostly thanks to his higher body temperature. It still hadn't gone down, and though the white veins had faded more, they were still burning.

He was starting to think that it was more or less permanent, what Fawkes had done - and considering the damage he’d had, it was pretty probable that part of him was now completely made of phoenix tears. He didn't mind it, of course, it was actually pretty cool when even during the coldest nights he wasn't cold at all, and the healing thing was pretty handy - not to mention the physical strength and odd limberness. He had once fallen from a tree and landed nearly folded _backwards_ and it hadn't even _strained_ him. That was pretty Merlin damned _wicked_ , if he said so himself.

Of course, he would've given it up in a heartbeat just to be home and have magic again, but yeah, without it, it could've been so much worse for him. And for Fawkes too, since he couldn't fly and still needed Harry to fetch him the nuts and such.

"What do you think, Fawkes?" he asked, while cracking the shells of the last patch of nuts for the phoenix. "Do you think the people back home are trying to get us back? I mean, Dumbledore's got to be doing something. He'd want you back, if nothing else."

Fawkes warbled a reassurance while plucking the nut from his fingers. Before swallowing it, though, the phoenix raised his head, tilting it sharply like listening to something. Blinking, Harry did the same, tilting his head and straining his hearing, trying to pick up what the phoenix was listening to. He couldn't hear anything unusual for a moment, just the wind in the upper canopy and the distant birds - and, some ways away, the stream where they got their water.

Then, so distant that Harry didn't quite know how he was hearing it at all; whistling. And not the sort of sharp, repetitious chirps and songs of the birds, but actual whistling - human whistling with a vague melody and tempo.

Harry jumped to his feet, the nut he was holding cracking in his fist as he concentrated, trying to listen harder. Which way was it coming from, what direction? Where? He turned his head left and right, but it was Fawkes who found the direction. The phoenix chick cooed and warbled, getting to his feet and flapping his still developing wings, before taking off into the forest.

"Okay, that way," Harry agreed and, hurriedly picking up a couple of the many rusty knifes he had found, and taking off after the phoenix. Fawkes, while still growing and clumsy because of it, was probably at least half as fast on his feet as he was on wing, so it was a bit of a task keeping up with him, but in the last week as the phoenix had gotten more lively and eager to move, he had gotten used to it. It helped that Harry could now jump farther than he ever could've even dreamed of jumping before.

Trying to keep Fawkes's fire red form in sight and the whistling in his ears, Harry ran and jumped over roots and rocks, as they soon went into territory they hadn't yet gotten the chance to investigate. They had mostly stayed around the river and followed it up and down as the berry bushes seemed to prefer to grow near it.  Harry soon realised that maybe they should've ventured further away as they found something he had been looking for, but had never expected to find so… winding.

A road, thin and slightly over grown, but obviously still in use, went through the forest floor, going around trees without having a single one of them cut, circling even around rocks. It was more of a path; actually, than a road, except for a path it was wide. And, by the looks of it, it was used by some sort of wheeled vehicles. Carts or carriages, maybe - the tracks were too thin and too smooth for rubber tires.

That, though, wasn't as important as the fact that there was a man - a _human man_ walking along it. Or he had been anyway, he had stopped and was now staring at Fawkes, who had stumbled into the winding path, losing his balance at the sudden change in terrain and tumbling over. Harry, unable to stop his own momentum in time, crashed to the street as well before he could even consider staying back and watching the man for a moment. He, though, didn't lose his footing, and managed to stop before crashing in to Fawkes.

The man stared at the pair of them with open astonishment, while Fawkes warbled with indignation and struggled himself back to his feet. Harry, on other hand, kept his eyes on the man, gripping his rusty knifes tightly. The man was definitely human. White haired, tall, probably older than Uncle Vernon - but infinitely in better shape, by the looks of him. He wore odd clothes - a red vest, green pants, odd white wrapping around his ankles and most of his calves and wooden sandals - but Harry hadn't really expected to see anyone in wizard robes or muggle jeans here, in another world. The man was obviously travelling; he had a heavy backpack and a bedroll with him.

He didn't look like he might attack or anything - he looked too shocked to do anything by the looks of him - but Harry still stayed on the defensive. You never knew, after all. He could understand the man's surprise though. Him, nearly bald, wearing _reeds_ and with white veins all over him - and Fawkes, great big chick who at times looked more like red ball of fluff than an actual bird. They probably made a pretty weird sight.

The man said something - and Harry realised another thing he should've considered, as he listened and couldn't pick out a single word he knew. He should've thought of it before, really. Another world was another world - the stars and the moons and the plants were different. Even if the people living here were _humans_ , what were the chances of them speaking even remotely similar languages? Pretty low.

The man took a step forward, and Harry quickly scooted back, lifting one of the knives just in case. Frowning, the man said something, holding his hands up in a sign of surrender - or to show he had no weapons, who knew - but Harry couldn't understand him any better this time.

"I can't understand you," Harry said, shaking his head and feeling Fawkes coming to his side and nudging at his knee comfortingly. He glanced down at the bird and then at the man who eyed him with a thoughtful frown. The young wizard shrugged a bit over dramatically and the man frowned harder, folding his arms and stroking his chin for a moment.

Finally, after a moment tense of silence, the man pointed a thumb at his chest. "Jiraiya."

Harry raised his eyebrows and then nodded slowly. "Jiraiya," he repeated awkwardly, getting the pronunciation a little wrong, but the man nodded with satisfaction regardless. After that, Harry motioned at himself. "Harry," he said, making the man frown.

"Har - Harii?" he asked and Harry nodded slowly, figuring it was close enough.

"Harii," the man repeated, motioning at the boy, then at himself, and then shrugging his shoulders and giving him a questioning look. When Harry could just stare at him in bafflement, the man repeated the gesture with some exaggeration, until Harry got it. The man wanted to know what Harry wanted from him.

Harry frowned for a moment, not entirely sure. When he and Fawkes had arrived, finding people would've been amazing - people meant houses and real food and comforts - but now he wasn't sure. They were pretty comfortable in the forest and since he didn't know the language… it could be bad. He would never know what people were saying to him or about him - he could get bamboozled so easily, abused even easier. Not that he had anything anyone could bamboozle from him, but still.

But… a real bed, real clothes, real food - _meat_ \- did sound awesome. A bath with actual soap, that would've been pretty nice right about now. The river was nice and cool, but couldn't get all the grime off. And Fawkes… well, Fawkes was probably perfectly happy in the forest, but he had to be sick of berries and nuts by now.

After moment of thought, Harry kneeled on the ground, looking at the bird. "Do you think we should try and see if we can find a town, or a village or something?" he asked.

Fawkes cooed gently, butting his chin with his beak and clawing the ground with his talons. Harry smiled and glanced up to the man who was eyeing him and the bird with fascination. Harry nodded, and then flipped one of the knives in his hand, before using it to draw a picture to the ground. A house which looked more like a box, then another beside it, a third behind them and so forth, until he had a crude representation of a settlement.

The white haired man nodded slowly and first pointed at the path ahead of them and path behind them, shrugging his shoulders. Harry couldn't quite tell whether he meant that there was village in both directions - or that he was hopelessly lost and had no idea. Harry frowned at him until the man crouched down and begun drawing into the dirt with his fingertip. First he drew a circle, motioning at Harry and himself, _we are here_ , and then he drew two lines going back and ahead of the circle. The path behind the circle was longer than the one ahead of it - in both ends the man drew same sort of box house Harry had.

"So, a village in both directions and the one onwards is closer," Harry murmured, looking ahead thoughtfully. "Fawkes, what do you think?" he asked, turning to the bird, who was resting his beak on Harry's bent knee. The phoenix let out a thoughtful croon, but didn't really give an opinion, leaving the decision into his hand.

The white haired man, Jiraiya, gave the pair of them a look, before starting to draw another picture. Harry watched with confusion as the man made a complex display of stick figures - going as far as to draw a stick figure bird - which seemed to be attacked by some other stick figures. There was a separate image with the attacking stick figures carrying away some things, it was hard to tell what, while the smallest stick figure and the bird were left behind, looking desolate.

Harry stared at the pictures in complete incomprehension for a moment while the man gave him a questioning look. Then he got it - and snorted, shaking his head. No, they hadn't been robbed - by stick figures or by other things. He shrugged his shoulders exaggeratingly and wiped the picture of the stick figure robbery away. The man looked at him incredulously, pointing at the reed loincloth-skirt and raising his eyebrows.

Harry flushed and shrugged, shifting his weight from one food to other. How did you explain in pictographs how you had woken up in middle of strange forest completely naked? He had no idea, so he settled onto not trying to explain. The man seemed to take it for an answer and gave him a sympathetic look, making Harry seriously wonder what he had just accidentally conveyed, when the man hoisted his pack back off, and went to rummage through it. While Harry and Fawkes watched with curiosity, the man pulled out a white cloth - some sort of shirt or short robe by the looks of it, and then offered it to him.

"I guess I'm a charity case now," Harry muttered, accepting the cloth and examining it. It wasn't too odd looking - rather like a shirt or a jumper which was open from the front, though the cloth wasn't exactly shirt or jumper material. Shrugging his shoulders, Harry pulled the cloth on, standing up and looking down at it. It was so big on him that it hung on him even worse than Dudley's old shirts had, reaching his knees easily. Thoughtfully Harry pulled the front shut and shrugged his shoulders, trying to get a feel for it.

He got overly hot within seconds, a wave of heat running over him and making him break out in sudden sweat. He frowned slightly opening the front a little, but it didn't much help. His body was now so warm that wearing anything, but his own skin made him too hot, it seemed. Grimacing, he quickly struggled out of the odd shirts, handing it back to man and shaking his head. When the man gave him a confused look, Harry made a fanning motion towards his face, sighing heavily.

Frowning slightly, Jiraiya held out his hand, expecting Harry to take it. Awkward, the boy did and then watched how the man tested the skin of his palm and the back of his hand before checking his pulse, obviously finding his temperature obviously surprising and giving him a worried look. Harry managed to only blink, before the man raised one large palm to his forehead, to test his temperature there.

Before the man could make the decision that he was ill, though, Harry raised his hands to stop his thought process, waving them downwards, trying to make the man calm down. He motioned at himself and then made a smoothing motion, smiling widely and trying to show he was perfectly normal. He patted his chest where the biggest white blotch was and smiled again, trying for soothing.

The man said something, asked something, now looking thoughtful. Harry shrugged, having no idea what he had said, and then watched curiously as the man went back to rummaging in his backpack. After a moment, he pulled out a pair of pants - his own, by the looks of how big they were. He raised his eyebrow questioningly and Harry tilted his head in answer, not entirely sure. The pants were huge and would be pretty loose in him, but he wasn't sure if he could wear them any better than the previous cloth.

It would be much better than the reed skirt, though - less likely to display his family jewels to the world.

After a moment of thought, Harry accepted the pants - and a fabric belt to tie them with, before examining them to see which way they would go. Jiraiya motioned to a nearby tree, raising his eyebrows. Harry nodded, and with Fawkes trailing after him, he went behind the tree to change.

The pants were huge. On Jiraiya they probably only reached him just below his knees - after which his legs were covered with the white wraps - but for Harry the pants easily reached his ankles, and on his much smaller legs, the pants were baggy and loose. They only stayed on after he tied them with the cloth belt, and after that he nearly got tangled in the pant legs, before discovering yarns there to tighten them with. Quickly he tightened the cloth around his ankles so they wouldn't get in his way, and found to his surprise that once everything was more or less secure, the pants… weren't that bad. They were a bit too warm, but with his chest and arms bare he wasn't that hot, and thanks to the loose material, his legs didn't immediately get sweaty.

"Not bad, huh?" he asked Fawkes while, arranging the folds of the waistline of the pants a bit more comfortably. The phoenix cooed in appreciation, before shifting closer and jumping a little beside his leg. Smiling, Harry crouched down and offered the bird his arm. After lifting him to his shoulder, Harry went around the tree again, to find Jiraiya sitting on the road side with a long pipe in his hand, smoking by the looks of it.

The man nodded with appreciation at the sight of him - and then gave him the thumbs up, which surprised Harry for a moment. It was such familiar gesture, but not one he had expected to encounter _here_. Regardless, he grinned back while throwing the reed loincloth away. Though it had been fun to make - and remake after he had managed to break the first one while tree climbing - he wasn't sad to see it go.

 

* * *

 

Jiraiya smiled to himself, while watching the weird kid, Harii, lifting his legs and kicking the air, testing how well he could move. The pants didn't look bad on him - certainly better than the weird skirt he had been wearing before - though he still looked pretty awkward and scrawny. Well, at least he didn't look like a barbarian anymore.

When the kid had stumbled into the road, he had seriously thought he was some sort of wild creature - maybe one of those feral kids one sometimes heard of in some villages. Kid who had grown up all alone in the forest without any human interaction - it happened probably more often than anyone knew, with the ninja world being the way it was. Parents dying in ambushes and robberies, kids being left behind out of mistake or mercy or whatever. And of course, there were probably hundreds of parents who abandoned their kids for who knew what reasons. This kind could've easily been something like that and Jiraiya probably wouldn't have been surprised.

But the kid obviously knew humans, and could talk and understand - except the language he spoke wasn't the same Jiraiya spoke. Who knew how a foreign kid had ended up in the southern forests of the Land of Fire, not to mention naked by the looks of it, but by the looks of his dirt stains and how he behaved, it had been at least couple of days ago - long enough for him to overcome the shock. And yet he hadn't died - he didn't look weakened or starved and despite having a high body temperature, he didn't look sick. So, he had obviously figured out some sort of way to survive.

And not just to survive, but to care for a pet too, Jiraiya added to himself, eyeing the great bird balancing on the boy's shoulder. When the bird had shown up and the kid right after it, he had for a moment thought that the kid had been hunting the bird and trying to kill it. Apparently he had been pretty wrong - looking at the way they acted like best palls, they had probably been together since the bird had hatched. Harii even had a name for the thing - Fokkusu, or something like that. The kid had to be pretty good at handling the bird too, just by feeding it he wouldn't have gotten it to follow him so tamely and to sit on his shoulder without making any fuss.  Unless of course he had been there when the bird had hatched and now the thing thought the boy was its mother.

The veins though… Jiraiya looked down at the boy's chest and the great white circle there, and the other on his shoulder. When the boy had headed behind the tree, he had seen matching circles on his back - much smaller ones, though, but still there. Like entry and exit wounds, which had been healed. What was with the veins, though? They were everywhere on the boy's skin - his feet and hands, and even on his face, all originating from the white blotches.

It was like blood poisoning, except the veins were white and, if Jiraiya was right, pretty old. If the blotches were wounds - and they were so smooth - then they had probably happened years ago, and had healed perfectly since, without leaving anything but the discoloured skin behind. Whoever had healed the kid had some serious talents, if the wounds had really been that big - and if the kid had been younger back then. As it was he barely looked ten years old, so how long ago could it have been? And what kind of healing left behind that sort of markers?

A… bloodline, maybe? He had seen stranger markers of bloodlines, but stuff like high body temperature was pretty common with some Bloodline Limit clans. There was the fact that the kid, despite having sticks for arms, was pretty strong too - Fokkusu was the size of a swan, and yet the kid seemed to barely notice it, as it sat on his shoulder.

Sucking a breath through his pipe, Jiraiya sighed. He would've loved to ask the kid, but he doubted he could've gotten something that complex easily across. It wasn't any of his business anyway.

As he thought, the boy got used to his new pants, marvelling at the pockets for a while and grinning. Then he looked up at Jiraiya and turned serious again, picking the rusty kunai he had been waving around, and holding them both in one hand. After a moment of silent staring, he glanced at the way Jiraiya had been heading, frowning thoughtfully.

"If you go there, you're going to get screwed over," Jiraiya said, knowing the boy couldn't understand him. The village he was heading to wasn't exactly the finest of the bunch - the complete opposite. The place would eat the boy alive - someone would probably steal his pet and put it on sale or something like that, and who knew what would happen to the boy himself. Probably something much, much worse.

But for someone who had been stranded in a forest with no idea where to go, as this boy probably had, it was still probably a preferable option to staying in the middle of nowhere. However it had happened, the kid was hopelessly lost and probably needed some help. Probably more than some.

"Tell you what," Jiraiya started, gaining an odd look from the nearly hairless kid. "How about we go together? It's a week's way until Fukyuu, and I wouldn't mind the company," and it would give him some time to see if he could find where the kid was from and maybe make sure he got there, unmolested.

Jiraiya might've been an unredeemable pervert and a lout, but he had some morals too - and limits, on occasion. Helpless little kids being abused or abandoned was right at the top of his list of things he didn't much like.

Saying what he was suggesting was a whole different thing to actually conveying it. Jiraiya was degraded from words to gestures to near shadow puppetry, before he finally drew childishly simple sketch of him the kid and the bird going together along the road. Finally the kid seemed to get it, but he didn't accept immediately, and instead he thought about it, and talked to the bird, looking like he was seriously considering the bird's thoughts. Jiraiya finished his pipe and emptied it while the kid finally came to decision.

Harii made the universal sign for _wait_ \- and then dashed into the forest, Fokkusu warbling excitedly as they went. Jiraiya stared after them in bafflement, not sure if he had just been ditched - before realising. However long the kid had been in the forest, he had been surviving somehow. He had probably found the old kunai lying around - which wasn't that strange, the forest had been the field of one of the greatest battles of the Third Shinobi War just fifteen years earlier - and who knew what else. He had made the loincloth probably himself and who knew what else. So, probably, he was heading back to where ever he kept camp to get his things.

The legendary hermit snorted at himself while putting the pipe away. This was probably going to be pretty interesting trip

 

**Author's Note:**

> This most likely will never be continued
> 
> Proofread by Darlene and Rebecca, thanks guys


End file.
